PhD Student Blog from the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading

Fluid Dynamics

The Fluid Dynamics of Sustainability and the Environment (FDSE) residential summer school runs every summer for two weeks, alternating between Cambridge University and Ecole polytechnique, which run the summer school in partnership. I attended this years hosted by Ecole polytechnique, situated to the South of Paris. 40 PhD students attended from institutes around the world, all working on a range of topics who want to learn more about environmental fluid dynamics.

The lectures covered topics on fundamentals of fluid dynamics, flow instabilities, environmental fluid dynamics, cryosphere, atmosphere, physical oceanography and renewable energy. The lectures went at a very fast pace (approximately triple speed!), aiming to familiarise us with as many concepts as possible in the two weeks, resulting in everyone taking home a large overflowing folder full of lecture notes to refer back to in the future.

We were kept very busy throughout the two weeks. Each day started with breakfast (coffee and croissants) between 7.30-8.20 am, followed by two back to back lectures 8.30-10.30 am. There was then half an hour for everyone to fuel their brain with coffee and (warm!) mini pastries before another hour lecture before lunch break. Lunch was roughly 12-1.30 pm, although typically there were so many interesting questions after each lecture that we ran progressively later relative to the schedule meaning that I think we only actually started lunch on time on the first day. There were also a number of guest speakers speaking on topics such as public engagement, climate policy, meteorology on mars and air quality.

After lunch we had the final lecture of the day, followed by a short break before numerical sessions and lab experiments, which ran until roughly 6 pm. These sessions gave us the chance to really learn about a particular topic in more detail and to have a more hands on experience with some of the material being lectured. My labs were on tidal energy where we explored the energy output and efficiency of tidal turbines, and Art and Science, which encouraged us to engage with Science in new and more playful ways and also to challenge us to look at it differently.

However the day didn’t end after the labs, the evenings were also jam packed! The first evening was a poster session, giving us all the opportunity to learn more about what all of the other students work on and to mingle. Other evenings consisted of learning to row sessions, visits to the observatory, movie nights and discussions about the ‘science’ in The Day After Tomorrow movie and barbeques enjoying the warm light evenings (definitely missing those now I’m back in Reading).

During the weekend sandwiched in the middle of the two weeks, we were all transferred to a hostel in the centre of Paris, setting us all up perfectly for some weekend sightseeing in Paris. On the Friday evening there was a boat party reception on the Siene, supplying us all with lots of wine, many difference French cheeses to sample and a lively dance floor.

The school ended on Friday July 14th, Bastille Day. After a morning presenting a few slides on the labs we had completed in groups to share what we had learnt, we travelled into the centre of Paris ready for an evening enjoying the spectacular Bastille Day fireworks around the Eiffel tower, ending the summer school with a bang.

Personally the main take away from the summer school was not to learn the entirety of the lecture content, but to become familiar with a wide range of topics gain more hands on experience of laboratory experiments and to have a (rather large) folder full of lecture notes to refer back to whenever I stumble across a particular concept again in the future. And of course, it was great having the opportunity to meet lots of other PhD students from around the world working on related topics and to be able to discuss, engage and get to know each other over the two weeks. I would like to thank all of the organisers and lecturers of the summer school for a really interesting and enjoyable two weeks!